Biskupic discusses challenges of high-profile cases, life after U.S. Attorney’s office

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Steven M. Biskupic is not a celebrity. But the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin has seen his name in print plenty throughout the last several years due to an influx of high-profile public corruption cases in the state which have been both revered and reviled by the media and the public.

After 18 years as a federal prosecutor, Biskupic conceded that the criticism and congratulations come with the job, but he says he has never let them influence the way he works a case.

Despite his dedication to his job, Biskupic is not immune to the prevailing political winds which blow out of Washington, D.C. Appointed as U.S. Attorney by President Bush in 2002, Biskupic admitted that his tenure may be coming to an end, pending the results of the 2008 presidential election.

Biskupic took time on Oct. 30 to sit down with Wisconsin Law Journal reporter Jack Zemlicka to discuss the challenges of handling high-profile cases, his potential plans for the future and what the most important part of his job is.

WLJ: How do you handle the inevitable controversy that comes with prosecuting high profile cases like the Frank Jude beating or the Georgia Thompson case?

Biskupic: You know going into any public corruption case or any police corruption case, you are going to have criticism no matter what you do. You just have to sort of accept it. If you are afraid of the criticisms, you’re just not going to do it and I don’t think that’s the right way to do things. Especially in the public corruption and the political things, if you do something or don’t do something, you’re going to get criticized by people on both sides of the political spectrum. I’d say that just comes with the territory.

WLJ: How do you keep that from becoming a distraction to others who work in the department?

Biskupic: The workload prevents the distraction. There’s always another case, some other issue, the next indictment or the next appeal. Since both the Jude [beating] case and the Thompson case, the Michael McGee case got indicted and that’s chock full of criticisms. Whether they are big cases or small cases, over 18 years there had been a lot of them and you can say, okay, these are the cases people remember this year, but they don’t really remember the Milwaukee alderman (Bob Donovan in 2005) or some of the other cases I’ve prosecuted involving lawyers, which at the time seemed like the biggest thing in the world.

WLJ: Are we seeing more lightning rod cases in the last five years than in the past?

Biskupic: I’m not sure how to answer that. I’ve been in this office for 18 years and … I certainly thought we’ve had high-profile things during that time. The elected official cases, particularly the Milwaukee city hall cases and police department cases ratchet things up to another level. We’ve had more of those, but so has Brian Blanchard in Dane County, so did Mike McCann during his years as Milwaukee DA and John Chisholm now.

It could just be they are getting more attention, because they seem to have come in a shorter period of time. You take them as they come in the door and as the FBI investigates them. It could be one conviction per case leads people to come forward with information on another case. Also I don’t think people are surprised anymore about public corruption cases in Wisconsin.

WLJ: Do more of these cases coming back-to-back put more of a strain on resources?

Biskupic: I would say that allocating resources is probably one of the most important decisions I make. Our job is not to be the local district attorney. They do more cases before 10 a.m. than we’re going to do all year. We work closely with them and local police where we can go after the upper 50 people of the Latin Kings, but that’s the sort of strategic decision we make in conjunction with local authorities. The public corruption cases get an awful lot of attention, but they are still a very small sliver of what we do. The thugs and the gangs and the white collar embezzlements are really the meat and potatoes of federal prosecution.

WLJ: What has been the most satisfying case of your career?

Biskupic: I’m obviously extremely pleased about the Frank Jude case. I would say that’s a case I’ll remember a lot 20 years from now. Looking back, some of the most satisfying cases have been the smaller investment frauds like the $100,000 case, which cleans out someone’s savings. Criminals come and think nobody is paying attention because it’s too complicated. You work on that type of case and you see the hardship that comes from people losing money for their kids’ education.

WLJ: Are there cases you do not particularly enjoy prosecuting?

Biskupic: Not really, but there are cases where you can see the impact on the office. What jumps out is child pornography cases. We try to spread those cases around because they are very draining for the prosecutors. The drug cases tend to burn out prosecutors as well. If you work on drug cases, there’s a lot of late nights. A lot of search warrants in the middle of the night and you execute a warrant, find out about a safety deposit box and first thing in the morning you try to get another warrant. It can be very grueling for the people involved.

WLJ: The DOJ has increased its immigration efforts. How have you shifted the focus of your staff to accommodate that?

Biskupic: It’s such a complex and huge issue. The way that we have tried to address it is pick out the most violent felons who have been deported and then re-enter. Those are the cases we spend the majority of our time on. The undocumented worker and things of that nature, we don’t get involved in because there are so many cases in the felon category. For us to do that, it would be very difficult without a major change in the allocation of federal resources.

WLJ: How hard is it to absorb the political pressures that often enter into high-profile cases?

Biskupic: It’s really easy to ignore them when you don’t care. I don’t mean to say that so flippantly, but if you are going to work on public corruption cases, you’re going to make a lot of enemies. But more importantly you want to avoid the arguments that come regardless, that you are doing this for some political purpose. I decided early on whether cases would turn out well or turn out bad, I wasn’t going to use those cases as any sort of political stepping stone. The other alternative is you just don’t do the cases and we’re not going to do that. I know there are other prosecutors around the country who aspire and use that, and I’m not criticizing that, but from my own personal situation, that’s not for me.

WLJ: How many hours do you typically work in a week?

Biskupic: I’d say it varies dramatically depending on what’s happening at the moment. There’s lots of late nights, but there are also lots of routine days as well. If a case goes to trial and I’m a part of that trial, I’m working w
eekends. But when cases get resolved, you get to go home at 5 p.m. and that’s great. For example the weekend before the Michael McGee arrest, there were a lot people working a lot of hours, including myself and John Chisholm.

WLJ: If you had not become an attorney, what career path might you have chosen?

Biskupic: I would have loved a career in sports if I was good enough, but I never had the talent. I don’t really know. It’s hard to say because I’ve been doing what I like for so long. It’s hard to say if I weren’t in law, what I would have been exposed to and what I would have liked.

WLJ: How long you expect to continue as the U.S. Attorney?

Biskupic: I know it’s coming to an end. When you move from assistant U.S. Attorney to U.S. Attorney, you lose all your service protection and the expectation is that a change in administration is likely to cause a change in the U.S. Attorney. Also it’s rare for the U.S. Attorney to stay on the job for more than a couple terms, so I’m coming up on that. I don’t have any plans as of now, but I have an expectation that I will go into private practice at some point.